We think the state Board of Education is onto something with a resolution last week urging Gov. Bill Lee and state legislators to focus earlier on struggling readers.
Third grade has long been seen as a critical year for young readers because it is the first year students are given TCAP (Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program) tests and because reading is so foundational for all future learning.
With the revelation of learning losses following the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, well-meaning Tennessee legislators passed a literacy law during a special session focused on education in 2021 that would retain third graders who did not perform at grade level on state English language arts tests and whose parents did not choose for them to have mitigating summer classes or assistance the following year.
The first students affected by the law were in third grade during the 2022-2023 school year and were retained, if mandated, for the current school year.
Many parents opted to put their children in the summer classes and/or agreed to the assistance offered the following year, and others took advantage of the ways — too many in our thinking — their children could get out of being retained. In the end, only about 900 third graders across the state — about 1.2% — were retained. That number, according to a Tennessee Education Research Alliance study, is not significantly different from the usual annual number of students held back.